Fender Squier Fat Telecaster

Fender Squire 'Fat' Telecaster.
List $379 Paid $310 new.
Made in Indonesia. 'Blonde' color.
2 pickups. 3-way switch.
Humbucker at neck gives extremely 'fat' sound.
Single-coil at bridge gives traditional Telecaster twang.
Middle selection gives smooth blend of both.
Neck is a light wood, perhaps maple.
Fairly slender and easy to grip. Very nice feel.
Tuning pegs look like standard Fender hardware.
Sound-wise, this is a great guitar.
The humbucker is extremely quiet, but 'fat' and sounds great
with distortion.

The humbucker at the neck position gives an extremely
fat, full sound. If you are looking for a Stevie Ray Vaughan
kind of sound, get a single coil at the neck position.
This is less bright, and thicker. But it is extremely
quiet and full.

The finish is excellent.
The neck (a light wood) is extremely smooth and fast to play.
The body is a banana-blonde color with a white pickguard.
Very pleasing to the eye with no apparent blemishes.
The 'blonde' color is traditional for a Telecaster.

I haven't used this guitar for live performances
and don't intend to. However, it looks very rugged and solid.
I doubt that durability is an issue here.
It is as heavy as a log.

N/A
Never needed customer service.

I've been playing for over 30 years, classic rock and blues.
I've owned a Fender srat and Gibson SG in the past.
Sound-wise, the Squire guitar is as good as the other ones.
My only complaint about the guitar is the weight of its body.
It is extremely heavy. I have also played a Fender 'fat' telecaster
and I would estimate the Squire is 2-3 lbs heavier.
I use this guitar strictly for recording, using a variety of
direct boxes. The weight of the guitar would make it difficult
for me to play standing up (I have low back pain).

If lost or stolen, I would get another Fat Telecaster.
But I would compare the weights of various models.
The weight of this guitar may not be representative
of all Squire Telecasters.

It's a 2000 Squire Fat Tele, Crafted in Indonesia, 3 Color Sunburst finish. 22 Med Jumbo frets, Solid hardwood (Agathis or Alder) with nice grain showing thru the sunburst. See Frank H.'s exc. description below. The nut on mine is similar to the others, high E seems a little to close to edge of neck (maybe 1/32 inch).

PS - If I could, I'd get the Vintage Blond finish, but it's no longer available. The 3 color sunburst, while done well, is too Yellow for me.

My style is everything but metal, with Blues, Country, and some Jazz as main styles. This guitar suits all these. I use a Blues Cube amp, and the PAF style Humbucker sounds very Jazzy, the Bridge PU is a nice Tele style - Alnico, needed some adjustment to match the HB output. Covers a wide variety of styles due to the HB, Single Coil, and combo switch settings.

Out of the box, it needed everything cleaned up / adjusted. The truss rod was loose, tuners were all lose, bridge set up very high, pickups needed height adjustment. One of the neck screw holes was oversized, but I fixed it myself with dowel/glue. Strings were "bent" - how? I don't know...Replaced them with Fender 150's - the best Tele strings.

Good finish, cavities are painted with cond. paint and clean, hardware looked good, tight neck pocket, has 500K pots for Vol., Tone. Needed Lemon oil on the fretboard. After all that - I'd now give it an 8.

It's a solid body Telecaster (says "Telecaster" in somewhat gaudy label on headstock)!! Is there a more durable guitar out there???

Hardware is above what I expected. Any problems down the road can be fixed with new hardware. I am impressed with it for the price paid.

I bought it partially because my Granddaughter likes to "Play" it while I'm playing. She uses whatever is near as a "pick!" So I need a DURABLE guitar.

I didn't ask about the neck screw, and MF has not yet answered me.

I been playing 30+ years. Have a Squire Protone Strat that is a beautiful, great playing and sounding Strat. Also have a Martin HD-28, play thru a BluesCube amp, BOSS DD3 and SC1 Super Chorus, Dano 7-band EQ and Temolo pedals, and a RAT. All "Toys" and fun to play with.

If lost, I'd look at a Fender Squire again. It's a great value, after it was set up and adjusted properly. At this price, I think it beats the Epi's, and other brands easily. I would gig with it along with the ProTone Strat. They cover all the tone ranges I'd ever need.

If you are a newbie, I recommend that you buy it where you can get it set up, or get the "How To" book, then have fun!

This is a Fender Squier Standard Fat Telecaster made in 2000 in Indonesia. Its most distinctive feature is the humbucker neck pickup combined with a traditional Tele single coil bridge pickup. Otherwise, visualize a 90?s Telecaster. 22 fret rosewood fingerboard on a maple bolt on neck (Fender offers no maple fingerboard option on this model). Body is "solid hardwood" according to Fender, medium weight and traditional Tele shape. Standard Telecaster control arrangement: 3 way pickup switch, one master volume, one master tone. Bridge is the same design as current US and Mexican Teles, a six-saddle cast rectangular footings setup on a stamped metal pan. The neck profile is medium shallow with a C section and the fretboard has a noticeable radius. The specs say "60?s style neck", and its possible that it has a 7.25 inch radius instead of Fender's current 9.5 inch radius. Vintage style (smallish) frets. Tuners are no-name sealed units, nut is plastic, and two folded steel string trees.

In short, this is Tele from the top of Fender?s low end line with a mix of a vintage neck with a modern body/pickups/bridge. The overall quality of the features ranges from acceptable to surprisingly good. This is not a fancy switch-laden shredbeast with double locking ball bearing pickup covers, but it is a very versatile Tele.

I play whatever comes into my head to play, and listen to and enjoy a wide variety of music varying from folky stuff, to blues, to some saturated rock?n?roll. A lot of what I do lately is guitar instrumentals and so I?m paying a lot of attention to interesting and varied guitar tones. I play it though a POD, a 1960?s Fender Princeton "blackface", a Music Man combo amp, and some other amps that I don?t use as often.

I was shocked by how good this thing sounds. The neck pickup sound is a nice humbucker with good note definition combined with warmth. The humbucker seems to be vintage (meaning lower) output level. The bridge pickup is outstanding for a stock pickup on a bargain line guitar. Note that I?m looking for vintage tone here, but this particular guitar on the bridge pickup has a grainy, slicing, slightly hotter than vintage sound when plugged into a cranked or overdriven tube amp: very nice. This pickup seems to not have the very top frequencies so it doesn?t have get glassy or shrill, but as with any good Tele lead pickup it has good bite and presence. In summary, I think it?s ideally voiced. As with most single coils it can pick up interference/electrical equipment noise.

I raised the bridge pickup slightly and lowered the neck humbucker to balance the sound between the two. The Tele "both pickups sound" has always been one of my favorites and the screaming "cut" of the bridge combined with the "fat/warm" neck humbucker makes for a rich sound when recording a song with lots of guitar in the front of the mix. Besides using them in combinations, the difference between them means you can go from mellow jazz/bluesy sound to an overdriven "woman tone" on the neck as if you were playing a Gibson style guitar and then flip back to the bridge and get all the Tele slicing scream to clean chicken pickin?--all with one guitar hanging on your neck.

The tone control has more range or a quicker taper than many others I've played. In general I don't use it with the neck pickup but with the bridge pickup its easy to get the Roy Buchanan "sighing" sound by turning the tone control down, hiting a note and bending it up with the left hand while rolling up the tone control and then wiggling it with the right hand.

I think this single coil/humbucker layout offers at least as much variety and the three single coil pickup/Strat switching Nashville Tele. The US Fat Tele has an extra switch position allowing for a split coil sound on the neck humbucker.

Off the rack the action was on the high side. I have no idea what the quality of the factory setup is in Indonesia and if the mass-market store I bought it from did anything to it before hanging it out. Many of my guitars have a flatter radius fretboard, and I?ve often preferred that. With the radius and as the neck sits it I cannot achieve super low action on this example even after I did my setup work. This is OK with me as most of my other Teles are not setup for this kind of action either. As one other reviewer here mentioned the high E string seems about 1/32nd of an inch too close to the edge of the fretboard up near the body, but you can fret it all the way up.

As I purchased it, it was playable, but it did require a setup. I did the setup myself when I got it home. It comes strung with 9?s and put on the ?original gauge? Fender 150 set (.38 to .10) which is what I use on all my Fenders. I adjusted the bridge saddle heights and matched them to the fretboard radius, tweaked the intonation length, filed the nut slots down a very small amount and found a couple of the slots needed to be a bit wider. I checked the neck relief and found that the trussrod was right with my string gauge and it was ready to play. As I mentioned above, I raised the bridge pickup slightly and lowered the neck pickup so that the sound of both together was balanced.

After a week or so of playing I found I was fretting out a bit on bends up the neck so I raised the action just a tad. Anyway, pretty much a standard setup that any guitar needs to play its best with the string set and playing style YOU use.

Nice metallic dark green paint with no obvious flaws. Frets were smooth and well seated though if you slide your hand up and down the fretboard edge you can feel each edge as you hand slides by. All the hardware works as it?s supposed to. Tuners seem fine and don?t slip, though I had to tighten 5 out of 6 of the nuts clamping them to the headstock.

Who knows how well the hardware will stand up to the years? At the worst it?s all replaceable if something goes.

In summary: I bought a bargain line third world constructed guitar from a mass merchandiser. It had some little things that had to be done to it, and most of these things would be covered in any good luthier?s setup. Since I could do them myself I saved the $30 or so that a skilled workman would charge for this.

This is a solid body Telecaster, it probably can be used for personal self-defense during a gig. I can?t tell if the hardware will stand up to years of playing yet, but the visible stuff seems OK to me. Some of the lower end Squier stuff feels like it?s ready to break before it leaves the store.

I always take a backup to a gig. I do that even if this was a custom shop model.

No dealings. 1 year limited warranty.

I?ve been playing guitar for 25 years. Other Telecaster style guitars I own are a MIM Nashville Tele, an early 80?s Japanese Tele copy, a Washburn hollow body Tele-shape with an under-saddle bridge pickup, and my original solid body guitar, a modded 1960?s Japanese guitar into which I put a Telecaster bridge pickup and a Gibson humbucker back in the 70?s.

I play a Telecaster style instrument more than any other kind and I still think it?s the most versatile yet distinctive sound going. From the time I modded my original solid body I?ve wanted a real Tele bridge sound with the neck humbucker combination and this was a surprisingly affordable way to get it.

I chose this one because of the sound and because I?m crazy about dark green as a body color. I?ve always avoided the lower end Squier line as I feel used instruments offer much more value at the same prices, but this one seemed to have good enough build quality. I?d love it if it had the new American Standard neck, but then I?d need to have $500 more dollars to spend on it too.

For more gear info visit my personal web site: http://www.users.qwest.net/~fhudson/

Bought 11/16/00 from Musician's Friend on-line for $259.00 2000 Squier Fat telecaster, "crafted in Indonesia". 22 medium frets, maple neck w/ rosewood unbound fret board. I bought the "vintage blonde" just because it's a cool color and I already have other guitars in cherry red and sunburst. I bought the generic black tolex case with it for $59.00 on special from Musician's Friend.

I like to play a little bit of everything. I have a an Epiphone Dot for more jazz and rock sounds and it can do almost everything pretty well except get those cool, funky single coil and out-of-phase sounds that Strats and Teles do so well. Perfect for Funk, R&B and Country. Right now I am playing this Tele through a Korg PX-3 just for practicing and it sounds really great. I liked the basic sounds that the guitar made right out of the box but there were some problems. See below...

The delivered setup was pretty bad. Either the neck was not adjusted evenly or the grooves in the nut were cut crookedly because the high E string was almost off of the neck and made it impossible to play correctly. I usually get the crappy plastic nuts that most cheap guitars come with replaced with a Corian nut anyway. The action was a little high and the guitar came from Fender with a set of .09 strings which I find pointless anyway. Almost all of the great guitarists seem to use a little bit heavier strings and I needed to build my callouses up anyway so I had a local guitar tech replace the nut, center the neck and setup the guitar with a .12 to .48 set of Fender Bullets. I also noticed that the balance of the sound level when switching from the single coil bridge pickup to the neck humbucker was way mis-matched as the humbucker was a LOT louder. With only one set of volume and tone knobs, this seems to be a big problem for playing live.

I also noticed that the Fender stock humbucker was extremely microphonic and since I tend to play a lot over where the neck pickup is, I was getting a lot of clicking as the pick would occasionaly hit the pickup. I had the guitar tech install a Noiseless Tele Vintage in the bridge position and a Texas Special Humbucker in the neck position. By playing with the pickup heights, I was able to get the volume level to almost match and these pickups sound killer compared to the stock ones. I went through the body before I gave the guitar to the tech and the stock pots and switch are crap so I had him replace them with higher quality replacements. While he was at it, I had him also replace the tone pot with a push/pull switch so that I could coil tap the new humbucker. Works like a dream and now I have a very versatile guitar, soundwise. Stock, out-of-the-box I would give this guitar a "4" for action, fit and finish. After my mods, it is now a "9"

Teles are probably some of the beefiest and most solid guitars out there. I bought this guitar to play at home, knowing that my two year old son will undoubtedly tip it over and bang into it while I have it out to practice. It's a cheap guitar so who cares if it gets a few dings? As I stated before, the stock pots, switch and pickups were junk so if you are going to buy one of these, plan on replacing at least some of the hardware before long. The strap buttons and and output jack are questionable too. The finish seems solid although I won't know how solid until junior takes a few whacks at it with some of his toys.

Would I gig with this guitar without a backup? I don't play professionally but if I did, I wouldn't be playing a Squier. This is a cool, cheap guitar that I bought, knowing that it was cheap but with some mods, it could be a really nice guitar. The way I see it, I paid $259.00 for it new and I spent $315.00 for the two new pickups, installation, new pots and switch, a new Corian nut, setup and intonation with .12s and a general going over by the tech. So now for a total of $574.00, I have a guitar that plays and sounds better than a stock Fender Fat Tele for around half of the price. If I didn't want to spend that much money, I would not have bought this guitar, I would have srung for the Mexican made Nashville Tele which you can get for $429.00 everywhere. The quality would have been better than this guitar, but I would have only been able to get single coil sounds and I still would have spent the difference in getting the Nashville Tele setup.

Haven't dealt with them but I have heard horror stories. Find yourself a good local guitar tech and just deal with the problem! My time is too valuable to try to mess around with phone calls and e-mails to Fender to use the "free" included warranty.

Have been playing for 25 years, Also own an Epiphone Dot, Roland GR-303 Guitar Synth and a Washburn D-21 Acoustic. Nothing I wish that I would have asked before buying, I did the research and knew exactly what I was buying. If it were stolen or lost, I would buy another Tele, not sure if I would get a Squier and modify it again or if I would just look for a good used US made Fat Tele. What do I love about it? The sound. It gets those beautiful bell like chime sounds that only a Fender can do right. What do I hate? That Fender charges so much for a US made Fat Tele. I wish that they had a Fat Tele that was made in Ensenada for around $500.00. Would have saved me a lot of effort but overall, now that I have personalized it to my needs, this guitar rocks!

Oh and I forgot, I have to be macho like all of the other people on here and say that if I found the guy who stole it (women don't steal, do they?), I would tie him to a chair and make him listen to a really cheap JVC rack system stereo cranked to 10 with Brittney Aguilera doing a duet with the InSyncBackstreet98degreeBoys for a week, then I would drag him to the local Guitar Center and make him listen to some 14 year old hacker practice his favorite Korn and Limp Bizkit riffs at full volume with a Marshall JCM2000 double stack for another week. Then I would take him to a Chuck E. Cheese and make him spend the afternoon there with my kids and no game tokens!

2000 Sam Ash Limited Edition Fat Tele. Solid wood body (agathis or alder), 22 medium-jumbo frets, Maple neck/fingerboard, candy apple red body and painted headstock. 3-way pickup selector, volume, tone. Neck humbucker (PAF style) and bridge Tele single coil. 6 section thru body bridge (American standard style). No-name sealed tuners (look like Schaller).

I use a Line6 Flextone amp and a Korg AX1000G multi-fx.
This Tele is very good sounding out of the box. The neck humbucker has crunch and is not muddy, has a good bright top with a Dlx Rvb style amp. Great for Blues and Jazz. Plays nice on a clean channel. The bridge single coil has that 'ol 60hz hum. It is nice and bright, twangy, and is not microphonic (even with dual recto setting). THe output is not high on the SC...Wwon't drive a Fender amp into overdrive. It is a good sounding Tele pickup.

For the money, the stock pickups are good. I will probably replace with Fender, Duncans or Lawrence pups someday

The Candy Apple Red paint job is flawless, looks like a million bucks. The neck shape is a wonderful chunky "c" shape with a satin finish. The fretwork is good, but not up to MIA Fender standards and I had one screw that wasn't vertical. Action was set high, but that is always a personal preference. I would say that the finish level is equal to a Mexican Fender.

It's a Telecaster

N/A

This is one great Telecaster for the money. Plays and sounds great. Feels great. Buy one fast!

2000 Squier Fat telecaster, "crafted in Indonesia". 22 medium frets, maple neck w/ rosewood unbound fret board. "Solid body", who knows what type(s)of wood the body really is, says alder or agathis in catalog I think (haven't removed any covers to see if its solid, pieces or laminate). Usual tele controls - 1 vol. and 1 tone knob (small knurled chrome), w/ a three way switch (looks really thin and cheap, I.E., may break off at some point).

This model has a chrome covered dual humbucker in the neck position and a single coil in the bridge position, both passive. Nifty cast looking tele style bridge w/ individual ajusters (height and "depth")for each string (stings are standard tele through body/bridge). Finish is "sherwood green", a medium green metal flake. Tuners are non locking, cheap sealed units...maybe a step above the affinity numbers. Few accessorys... I've been looking for one for a while at a store, didn't want to order off net w/o handling first. Saw this one a few weeks ago at local Mars Music store. It had just arrived and was pristine. Came back yestarday and some one had dropped it and/or dropped something on it and scratched the back, put a deep bulls eye in the top edge slightly smaller than a dime and bent the first string tuner. Store gave me 1/3 off, only $20 more than an affinity and it only consmetic damage.

Suits me fine. Simple easy to use tele style w/ addtion of humbucker...to help me pretend I'm Neil Young etc... Running through a 35 yr. old Gibson scout style tube amp, lots of noise at time, is probably from amp (sound great through solid state at store). Only had a day and played about three hrs., but sounds range from tele twang to crunchy block of wood w/ a humbucker on it and everthing in between w/ only stock amp. reverb and tremelo (thinking of a fuzz box and some other effect gadgets though). Like the range of styles/sounds, but the tone knob is a bit on/off - limited range, kind of goes from twangy to dirty w/o a lot of in between shades. Sound was a bit thin but I am raising the pick ups slowly and it has improved.

Action is really good for a $200 guitar. I'm old enough to remember when either you dished out serious money for a professional quality instrument or took a chnace w/ some asian board that often as not was unplayable past the 9th or 12th fret and/or it buzzed like hell, and even alot of those were not inexpensive.

Pickups were pretty much flush and I've been raising them slowy. Fit and finish are pretty good (bridge as noted is tele surface mount style), the fret wire's cut edges are a little sharp in spots, but that's an easy fix. Controls seem tight, but the input jack was loose and seems like it may also need a tweek to keep the plug from backing out. The nut seems to be plastic and its pretty thin, but time will tell.

As noted above guitar had been dropped or something at store, metal flake finish seems very deep....the heavy bulls eye dent pushed down into the paint about 3/32nds of an inch, but didn't flake it off (can see depth of paint) and even the bent tunner works OK. Tunners don't hold as well as I like (I've been doing lots of bends) and bent one may give me an excuse to upgrade in future.

Based upon the 3 hrs. or so I've played this tele it's readily playable and got more than enough toughness to be used night in and night out as a main live axe (hell, some boob dropped it in the store pretty hard and didn't effect the electronics or damage the neck at all). Finish seems built to last, the strap buttons appear to be mounted solid, but are a bit small and my old Fender leather strap has popped off a couple of time already (like the look of those straps w/ the built in chich down locks...another toy...er, acessory to buy). I'm pretty sure I can depend on it and would gig w/o a backup if necessary.

It's got a life time warranty as long as I own the guitar, registered online at Fender.com. Pretty painless, but site didn't work exactly as designed. Haven't used yet...but thinking about seeing if I can weedle some new tuners out of Fender to replace either the bent one or the whole set.

I have been play off and on for about 25 years (played drums semi pro for a while, played bass in past as needed, picked up guitar first as teenager, then later by proximity to musicians). Own an Fender D-75 acoustic from the mid '80's.

If the Fat Tele was stolen I would be pissed because I got a really, really good deal on this tele, due to cosmetic damage, and would either have to fork out 1/3 more to replace it (IF I could find one), by an affinity or think about a mexican or american Fender (or some other brand/style).

I love that for less than 1/2 the price of the mexican '72 custom tele reissue, and for about 1/5 the price of a USA made humbucker mounted tele I got almost the same guitar. Love that it has such a wide varity of sound options.

Not much to hate for the price I paid...wondering about the semi-cheesy input jack and tunners though. I looked at the Fender/Squier line (and several used), Gibson/Epihone (Les Pauls and SG's) and a real sharp tranlucent green Guild Blues 90 at Willies American Guitars, but after lots of research decided this Squier Fat Telecaster had by far and away the most bang for the buck.

I wish the clutz had not dropped it (I had finally had worn the wife down into agreeing to let me buy it and was ready to pay full price), but it is only cosmetic dnamage and I'm sure I'll ding it up as time goes buy. If you can find one of these and have the dough, but don't want to pay $500-$1000 for the mexi or USA made models -BUY IT!!! I think it will probably only go up in value, as I undertsand it, Fender made something like this before, but quit making it a couple of years ago(maybe when they figured out it was cutting into their upper end model sales?) and potentially a great hot rod platform if you'e into that.